Custom Software

Licence chaos for 50 people. Fixed in two weeks.

Internal tool / ~50 people · 2 weeks

In short

At ~50 people: no clarity on who held which licence, shadow seats, offboarding took days, security gaps stayed invisible.

Internal app: React, Supabase, roles for staff / admins / tool owners. Seeded with a CSV from the old Notion.

A real time answer on who can access what; offboarding in minutes instead of detective work.

How it starts

Past a certain team size, it creeps in quietly. New hires need access, they get it. Then a role changes. Then another tool arrives. Over months, four, five, six licences per person pile up. Some used daily, others not opened for weeks.

For a team of about 50 people, the answer to this problem was a single Notion page. Created once, filled once. And never touched again.

The snapshot was months old. Reality had long since moved on.

What that meant in practice

First: money that quietly drains away. People who no longer need a tool, or who changed role: their licence keeps running. Paid for, unused, invisible in any system. Nobody chose that. It happened because nobody was tracking it.

Second: a real security issue. If you cannot say who has access to what, the risk is not theoretical. Tools that hold financial data, customer data, or internal comms are enough to raise hard questions, especially when something goes wrong.

Third: offboarding that felt like detective work. When someone left, you had to email every tool owner one by one. They would check. Reply eventually. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks. And still that nagging doubt that someone had been missed.

What was built

Not another spreadsheet. Not another Notion page stale in three months. And not an off the shelf enterprise suite where you never touch eighty percent of the features.

What was built is an internal web app, tailored to how the company works. React on the front end, Supabase on the back, roles and permissions designed from day one.

Two views, one platform. Employees see their own active licences. Finance, HR, and tool owners see the full picture: how many active seats per tool, who has a licence that has sat unused for months, and which systems someone must leave on the next offboarding.

Roles are clearly separated. Employees only see their own data. Admins see everything. Tool owners manage their own area. No sprawl, no wrong access, no ambiguity about who may do what.

Kick off was a one time CSV export from the old Notion page. One afternoon of work. After that, everything runs in the app: add licences, adjust them, steer people cleanly out of every relevant system when they leave.

The tool runs internally. Data stays inside the company. No monthly subscription for the product itself.

Concept after one week. Fully shipped after two.

What changed

Offboarding now takes minutes. The dashboard shows at a glance which seven, eight, nine tools someone is still in. Log in, remove, done. No email ping pong, no waiting for replies, no fear you missed a tool owner.

On the first full pass, many licences surfaced that were still paid but mapped to no active user. Identified and cancelled on the spot.

For the first time there is an answer to who has access to what, right now. In real time: no chasing people, no stale lists.

Why it matters

Software licence management is one of those problems every company with more than ten people knows, and almost everyone solves with a spreadsheet nobody opens after three months. Not because people are sloppy, but because no system makes upkeep easy.

This is not a complicated project. It is a lean, focused tool that fits how you already work, not the other way round.

Does this sound familiar from your own company? 30 minutes is enough to see whether a similar approach makes sense.